Benjamin Lee

The director, Renny Harlin, is a competent and experienced hand, so there’s a sturdy workmanlike quality here but, more typically associated with bombastic action movies, he just doesn’t have the patience required to build real, clammy suspense or the awareness of the smaller specificities that are needed to immerse us in an intimate story such as this.

It’s a slight cut above just how very bad these things can get, but not enough to edge it toward something that would deserve your full attention. So errand away, Mother of the Bride will be just fine playing in the background.

The writer-directors Spenser Cohen and Anna Halberg really have no idea how to fill the gaps between deaths and even at 92 minutes, we’re left with something that feels so much longer.

With Hathaway at its centre, The Idea of You is on far surer footing, in small moments almost threatening to be something far greater but settling into being perfectly acceptable instead, a plane movie par excellence.

As the plotting falls apart and the wheels truly come off, there’s nothing that strong direction and a work-hard cast can do to keep Abigail from sucking. There’s a lot of blood here but very little else.

As another one of the director’s mid-budget, mid-level crowd-pleasers, it mostly works – well-made enough to distract in the moment but not quite enough to last in the many after, unlikely to catapult him to the top or sink him to the bottom.

Even the fantastical elements don’t make that much sense, magic with rules that are loose and undefined, leaving us with an eye-roll of an ending we can see from a mile away.

This 70s-set prelude to the classic satanic horror has flair but struggles with the weight and familiarity of what came before.

It’s a still fun yet far sloppier outing, a second round that’s less of a win for us and more of a draw.

There is of course more here to remind us of Lohan’s unwavering charm but that’s not quite enough to distract from just how tired and limply written the whole thing is and how depressing it is to watch her still stuck here.

If Damsel doesn’t exactly rewrite the storybook, it makes for a competent rework of it, a rousing revenge saga that provides a thin yet encouraging message for its younger female audience and a balm for those older viewers who grew up being spoon-fed the same old gendered cliches.

Aiming for more fun is no bad thing but Imaginary is far too dumb and ungainly to move at the pace required and bring the thrills it should, a theme park ride that should be closed for repairs.

The stupidity of it all is certainly diverting but it’s all too scattershot and at times stiflingly portentous to cross over into pure camp.

It’s not the act of raw honesty it thinks it is and it’s certainly not a successful visual album; Lopez’s new songs all sound hopelessly middle-of-the-road – over-produced and under-written, stuck in the early 2000s, a time when her music did have a genuine, exciting electricity. The visuals are similarly dated.

There is nothing gritty or believable about any of it. The film is as dumb and schlocky as the worst of the genre, with lousy network TV effects, uninvolving action and unfunny and inelegant dialogue, its characters drowning in poorly written exposition (even if the much-memed viral line from the trailer is sadly not in the movie itself).

To its credit, Lisa Frankenstein wears its inspirations on its black lace sleeves, never feigning true originality but there’s only so much looking back we can handle without things being pushed at least a little bit forward. In bringing a subgenre back from the dead, Cody and Williams could have used a little more life.

The first-time writer-director Laura Chinn can’t quite muster enough genuine emotion to get us there, her so-so debut working best when investment is at its lowest.

It’s a generous, sensitive study of allyship and what that really means in the day-to-day with Ferrell working out in different, often potentially dangerous, situations how to do the right thing.

There’s a cracking elevator pitch of an idea here (one wonders if inevitable sequels will be able to squeeze more juice from it) but Jardin’s cocky, in-your-face excess coupled with his lack of follow-through makes this an unwinnable game.

It works in parts, as a study of the ache and irrationality of grief, asking its characters how much they’re willing to accept and deny in order to see their loved ones again. But the first-time director Thea Hvistendahl’s patience-insisting slow burn can be testing, like watching a block of ice slowly melt, a story told in the smallest of drips, some of which sink in deeper than others.

Soderbergh operating at a lower level is still higher than many of his peers. Presence just never fully comes together in the way we hope, a ghost story haunted more by the possibility of what it could have been.

Working through one’s own strife as a form of autofiction can often lead to self-indulgence but Kaphar has crafted something that deserves to exist outside of his inner circle, an emotionally wrenching drama set to resonate with those who have also had to confront the complicated equation of radical forgiveness.

Without the garish excess, the script is rote and rickety, a ride to the wild side that’s all out of gas.

There’s a surprisingly grand emotional punch, arriving suddenly and landing with force.

I Saw the TV Glow marks a remarkable progression for Schoenbrun as both writer and director, a more substantive, if still challenging, narrative married with an incredible, expanded ability to fully immerse us in the visuals they have created. It’s made with such transportive precision that I can still feel it as I write.

For a film so clearly designed to be fun above all else, it ends up being a bizarre slog.

It feels like a short that was expanded without enough thought for how it might work as a whole movie and by the end, even that curiosity has faded too.

There’s a grubby, late-night appeal to his dialled-up trash aesthetic and The Beekeeper mostly works because of it. Bee prepared for a sequel.